Since the completion of the Human Genome Project and the beginning of the post-genome era, much biological information has emerged that is difficult to quickly process with existing laboratory analysis systems. Under such circumstances, vital phenomena have been investigated, new drugs have been developed, and progress in the development of biological detection systems for diagnosis has been made based on microfluidics.
The performance of microfluidic chips, such as labs-on-a-chip, based on microfluidics is determined by the ability of the microfluidic chips to accurately and conveniently analyze samples in a short time using smaller amounts of the microfluidic chips. Much research is currently being conducted in various fields to develop microfluidic chips with higher performance.
However, such microfluidic chips suffer from difficulty in sensitively detecting micro- or nano-sized samples and reaction products, do not effectively filter materials remaining unreacted therein, and fail to provide highly sensitive and reliable analysis results because the reaction products and unreacted reactants coexist.